The spiral in the field did not go away.
Ace stood at its edge with Sarah just after sunrise, boots crunching against the deadened soil. Everything inside the circle was ruined. And everything outside it—untouched.
He didn't need a scientist to tell him it wasn't drought, or disease, or bad seed.
It was summoning.
Sarah had a knife in her boot now. Salt packets in her pocket. She hadn't said it out loud, but he could tell. She was afraid of him.
Not in the way she'd feared Sarai, or the mirror, or the rituals that once scarred this house.
No, this fear was something closer to grief. Like she was watching someone she loved slowly slip beneath the surface of something she couldn't reach.
And Ace couldn't blame her.
Because part of him… wanted to go.
They returned to the attic.
To the journal.
This time, he read it aloud.
"The Chosen Below is not born. He is remembered. When the land opens, he will feel the call. He will see the mark. He will carry the key not in hand, but in bone."
Sarah looked up. "What does that mean? A key in bone?"
Ace unbuttoned his shirt slowly, wordlessly.
On his chest, where the spiral had appeared in the dream…
It was now real.
Faint, but visible. Like a birthmark awakening.
She reached for it.
He flinched.
"I think it's… spreading," he whispered.
That night, they argued.
Sarah wanted to leave.
Ace refused.
"You don't understand," he snapped. "This isn't just about us. If we leave this place—if we abandon it—someone else will come. The land will whisper to them."
"We'll salt it," she said. "Burn it down. Pour concrete and never look back."
But even as she said it, they both knew it wouldn't be enough.
The house wasn't the source.
It was just a mouth.
And mouths could move.
The next time he went to the chamber alone, Sarah didn't try to stop him.
She just followed quietly, three steps behind.
The door at the bottom was still sealed—but the stone had cracked.
A fine line across the center.
Ace stood over it, eyes wide, breath shallow.
"I didn't do that," he said.
Sarah said nothing.
He crouched down, pressing a palm to the break.
And this time, the whispers didn't invite.
They begged.
"Come below, Anakeion. Your body is the door."
He fell back, gasping.
Sarah caught him, arms tight around his shoulders, trying to pull him away—but he didn't move.
"I think I am the key," he said.
Upstairs, the mirror shattered.
Not like glass.
Like skin.
Peeling.
Splitting.
From its center, something dark breathed.
Back in the study, Sarah tore through the last of Hal's books. She found it—barely legible, crammed between notes on other cults, other doors, other worlds.
A line in red ink:
"When the Anakeion accepts the inheritance, the door opens inward. And what waits does not walk. It wears."
She ran back down the stairs.
"Ace!" she shouted. "If you open it—if you become it—you won't stay you."
He turned, slowly.
And for a moment, she saw it in his eyes:
The spiral reflected there.